Holy Nova Healing

I was playing tonite w/ some buddies running a lower lvl friend through some higher lvl instances, which was a cakewalk. I got bored so I started running around spamming Holy Nova for fun. I noticed that it healed for about the same amount as CoH does in the same gear. My question is this:

Does anyone see holy nova being a potentially standard spell for disc priests in order to heal grps? It costs less mana, it heals for about the same (more if you glyph it), it has the same radius as CoH (only targets self and only affects the party), and best of all, imo, it causes no threat. Also, every heal can crit and proc shields on everyone. I know that I would have to be closer to combat than I would probably like, but if I throw a shield on myself, I'm not too concerned about that.

Seeing as I just started playing around with this tonite, i don't know how viable it would be in a "real" dungeon, but I wanted to get your guys' thoughts.

Re: Holy Nova Healing

I play a Spriest, but to be honest, I love HN especially in AoE fights. For example in Mt Hyjal, I spam it during the waves. It does fairly consistant damage, it can crit on the damage and it heals the wave tank. In fact it usually heals me enough that the healers don't have to worry about healing me at all. All in all it is a great little spell, even for one such as I.

Re: Holy Nova Healing

Honestly, I don't see Holy Nova ever becoming something more than a fun toy with very occasional and limited uses. In a raiding situation it's fairly seldom that your entire group will be close enough to you to receive the healing effects since it's targeted on yourself. Perhaps it could be of some use in 5 mans for a Disc priest, but that's about all I can see.

Re: Holy Nova Healing

It can be very effective in various situations like Hex Lord where you have a lot of raid damage, and if you are specced Disc and so do not have access to Circle of Healing then it is much more effective than trying to get off a Prayer of Healing. Also, the glyph that increases the healing by 40% could make it quite an effective instance/small raid healing spell.

Plus you can kill snakes with it ^^

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Re: Holy Nova Healing

I used it for the 1st time in a very long while last week - on a hunter who was taming Uvuros in SMV and I needed to heal him without getting aggro myself.

But before that, I hadn't even taken that spell out of my spell book. I may have a look at the glyph and see if that'll improve it - I'm spec'd 28/30/3 so don't have CoH so an instant AoE heal would be useful.

Re: Holy Nova Healing

Originally Posted by derevka

Glyphed, it provides nice HPS for your party (assuming they are grouped up).

If you got the Glyph slot, sure. Otherwise, you probably are better off using other Glyphs

At patch 3.0 I respecced CoH and got the glymp for Holy Nova. Holy Nova has a little more mana efficient then CoH (at 700 spellpower). The downside is, it's bound to your own party, the good part is it heals for more (and since they are both instant if could be ok).

But when you'll hit 80 and going 25 mans again, I think you won't use it often.

Edit>> Wait, I forgot Blizz is adding a cooldown... hmmmm. I'd say put a Holy Nova healer in a party with the tanks and a tree!!!

Re: Holy Nova Healing

Depending on spec, a glyphed holy nova actually becomes tremendously effective, albeit limited to party-only, shorter range. For discipline priests w/ reasonable spellpower, at 80 glyphed HN offers more HPS and HPM than PoH w/o its glyph. Even for holy priests it can be highly competitive w/ CoH and PoH.

In 10- and 25-man content HN can still have its place. It won't be as solid as CoH had been pre-3.0 or in its current rendition but, with the upcoming nerf, will likely get the 3rd glyph spot for my 80 disc priest.

Re: Holy Nova Healing

In nerfed 25 man mt Hyjal I was pretty effective running in and spamming HN

It supplied a nice extra AOE + a nice heal for the Melee. In that situation it was perfect because having 2 priests giving a bit of additional AOE we always had time to drink after the mobs had died. Also having an aggro dump was nice as an oh shit button.

having that experience I decided to try it out in nexus - worked just as well and as we had an oom mage at the end of some of those pulls there was plently of time to recover mana

I look at it like an off healer Ele sham or Boomkin - it adds something but isn't essential. Sure as hell is fun though

Re: Holy Nova Healing

HN Glyphed can heal for 2k+ on each target and hit every mob withing range. Each heal and hit can crit which can in turn proc SoL.

So, with that, if you are in a 5man with a few melee next to the tank and some adds laying around that don't cleave/AoE, run up and hit that HN, proc SoL, hit the tank. That is 5k you pumped into the tank and 2k to everyone else. Also, pets count as in group, so go nuts, on them too.

In 10 and 25 mans you can do the same, it just might not be as worth it depending who is in your group.

Also Inner Focus => Nova you can almost grantee a SoL proc. Not always usefull and its usually bad if you are doing it, but sometimes that move can save a close call....